Ja-Young Sung

My Roomba is Rambo: intimate home appliances

Robots have entered our domestic lives, but yet, little is known about their impact on the home. This paper takes steps towards addressing this omission, by reporting results from an empirical study of iRobots Roomba™, a vacuuming robot. Our findings suggest that, by developing intimacy to the robot, our participants were able to derive increased pleasure from cleaning, and expended effort to fit Roomba into their homes, and shared it with others. These findings lead us to propose four design implications that we argue could increase peoples enthusiasm for smart home technologies.

The ins and outs of home networking: The case for useful and usable domestic networking

Householders are increasingly adopting home networking as a solution to the demands created by the presence of multiple computers, devices, and the desire to access the Internet. However, current network solutions are derived from the world of work (and initially the military) and provide poor support for the needs of the home. We present the key findings to emerge from empirical studies of home networks in the UK and US. The studies reveal two key kinds of work that effective home networking relies upon: one, the technical work of setting up and maintaining the home network, and the other, the collaborative and socially organized work of the home which the network is embedded in and supports. The two are thoroughly intertwined and rely upon one another for their realization, yet neither is adequately supported by current networking technologies and applications. Explication of the “work to make the home network work” opens up the design space for the continued integration of the home network in domestic life and elaboration of future support. Key issues for development include the development of networking facilities that do not require advanced networking knowledge, that are flexible and support the local social order of the home and the evolution of its routines, and which ultimately make the home network visible and accountable to household members.

Housewives or technophiles?: understanding domestic robot owners

Despite the growing body of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research focused on domestic robots, surprisingly little is known about the demographic profile of robot owners and their influence on usage patterns. In this paper, we present the results of a survey of 379 iRobots Roomba™ owners, that identified their demographic and usage trends. The outcome of the survey suggests that Roomba users are equally likely to be men or women, and they tend to be younger with high levels of education and technical backgrounds. Their adoption and use patterns illustrate the important role that gift exchange plays in adoption, and how the robot changes cleaning routines and creates non-cleaning activities. More generally, we argue that domestic robot adoption is growing, and suggest some of the factors that lead to a positive experience.

How smart homes learn: the evolution of the networked home and household

Despite a growing desire to create smart homes, we know little about how networked technologies interact with a houses infrastructure. In this paper, we begin to close this gap by presenting findings from a study that examined the relationship between home networking and the house itself--and the work that results for householders as a consequence of this interaction. We discuss four themes that emerged: an ambiguity in understanding the virtual boundaries created by wireless networks, the home network control paradox, a new home network access paradox, and the relationship between increased responsibilities and the possibilities of wireless networking.

Cultural design of domestic robots: A study of user expectations in Korea and the United States

In this paper, we describe the results of a comparative analysis of user-created designs for future domestic robots made by participants in Korea and the US. We identify their culturally variable expectations and preferences. We use a generative design methodology, which includes users visualizing their designs followed by semi-structured interviews. We describe our results in four areas of design: the look and feel of the robot, interaction mode, social role, and desired task. We identify variable cultural models relating to robotic technology and the cultural meaning of the domestic context as central factors. Finally, we discuss the design implications of our findings to culturally situated robot design.

The message center: enhancing elder communication

The Message Center is a home-based communication solution specifically designed for elders. Our research indicates that insufficient communication amongst elders causes several challenges in their daily activities such as loneliness, social isolation, and decreased appetite. The biggest cause of these challenges is that elders are increasingly removed from communication technology including email, text messaging, and mobile phones due to cognitive and physical difficulties. To overcome this problem, we incorporate a familiar pen and paper based interaction that allows instantaneous messaging via digital network. By designing the Message Center, we strive to create an easier venue for more active cross-generational communication between elders and younger family members who are often the caregivers. This paper demonstrates a User Sensitive Inclusive Design process from the generation of user needs to the evaluation of prototypes. A key theme of the Message Center project is to show how usable and emotional design derived from a user inclusive design process can encourage elders to adopt new communication technology.

Shadow Box: an interactive learning toy for children

The Shadow Box is a tangible computing project that exploits visual association and auditory clues to teach children the representational relationship between words and their meanings. The Shadow Box contains three major components: the main box, picture blocks and word blocks. The Shadow Box activates when a block or a matching pair of blocks is placed inside. The box prompts children to find matching blocks and combine them together. When children successfully combine the right word and picture, the box rewards them with an animated video as if they had made the objects come alive. An informal study shows that children responded positively to the concept of the box. They played with it for a length of time and engaged in a collaborative learning process with other children.

Designing home availability services

We have explored the challenges of designing domestic services to help family and friends determine mutually agreeable times to call one another. In a prior study, we identified activities in the home that predict availability to an external interruption. In our follow-up study, we used a cooperative design activity to see which, if any, of these home activities the family member is willing to share when engaged in mealtime or leisure routine. The data people are willing to reveal is more detailed for mealtime, than leisure activities. Furthermore, the shared availability service needs to be accessible throughout the home, in either compact, portable form or integrated with other services in various room locations. Accuracy and reliability of the shared information, along with device independent caller identification are also essential design requirements. While not unique to the home, the desire to personalize and present a socially acceptable availability status is extremely important.

Three Perspectives for Evaluating Human-Robot Interaction

The experience of interacting with a robot has been shown to be very different in comparison to people’s interaction experience with other technologies and artifacts, and often has a strong social or emotional component – a fact that raises concerns related to evaluation. In this paper we outline how this difference is due in part to the general complexity of robots’ overall context of interaction, related to their dynamic presence in the real world and their tendency to invoke a sense of agency. A growing body of work in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) focuses on exploring this overall context and tries to unpack what exactly is unique about interaction with robots, often through leveraging evaluation methods and frameworks designed for more-traditional HCI. We raise the concern that, due to these differences, HCI evaluation methods should be applied to HRI with care, and we present a survey of HCI evaluation techJames E. Young University of Calgary, Canada, The University of Tokyo, Japan E-mail: jim.young@ucalgary.ca JaYoung Sung Georgia Institute of Technology, GA, U.S.A. E-mail: jsung@cc.gatech.edu Amy Voida University of Calgary, Canada E-mail: avoida@ucalgary.ca Ehud Sharlin University of Calgary, Canada E-mail: ehud@cpsc.ucalgary.ca Takeo Igarashi The University of Tokyo, Japan, JST ERATO, Japan E-mail: takeo@acm.org Henrik I. Christensen Georgia Institute of Technology, GA, U.S.A. E-mail: hic@cc.gatech.edu Rebecca E. Grinter Georgia Institute of Technology, GA, U.S.A. E-mail: beki@cc.gatech.edu niques from the perspective of the unique challenges of robots. Further, we have developed a new set of tools to aid evaluators in targeting and unpacking the holistic human-robot interaction experience. Our technique surrounds the development of a map of interaction experience possibilities and, as part of this, we present a set of three perspectives for targeting specific components of interaction experience, and demonstrate how these tools can be practically used in evaluation. CR Subject Classification H.1.2 [Models and principles]: user/machine systems–software psychology